The Deal I'm Making
by lovablegeek
Summary: Preseries - Jack and Alice Guppy have a talk about the nature of Torchwood, and Jack has a few second thoughts. - One shot


Jack didn't hear her coming. That was strange for him, but he supposed it didn't matter much. If he was just going to come back every time someone killed him, there wasn't a whole lot for him to worry about. He glanced over his shoulder, just long enough to identify her - the Scottish one - and then snorted, turning back to look out over the city. "How did you find me?"

"I saw an odd shadow. I thought I should investigate. You might have been one of our - what was your word? - phantasmahoojits. Don't you have better thing to do than sit on rooftops?" the girl asked as she picked her way toward him across the roof, careful but not overly cautious.

"Not really," he answered, without turning to look at her. Although, on reflection, he wasn't so sure about turning his back on her. She seemed to enjoy shooting him a bit much, and the fact that he'd recover if he died didn't mean he necessarily _wanted_ to die again just now.

"Well, there is an assignment..." Her voice stopped just behind his shoulder. His shoulder blades prickled. Backstabbing. He'd like to avoid that as well, if he could manage it.

Jack sighed, and glanced back again, catching her eye. She was such a tiny thing... A distant part of his brain that never quite went away calculated nine ways to kill her before he stopped it. He could kill her, go back and kill her partner, destroy any record they had of him and be rid of this Torchwood... eliminate a threat to the Doctor at the same time...

But he wasn't that kind of man anymore. He couldn't be.

"Which one are you?" he asked, because thinking of them as "the Scottish one" and "the blonde one" probably wouldn't work for long. "I'm sure I caught your name before, but my memory's not so great after I've been _shot_."

She smiled, a cool, cocky smirk that would have almost been at home on the faces of a few Time Agents Jack used to know. "Alice Guppy. I'll forgive you for forgetting, under the circumstances."

Jack rolled his eyes a little, his lips curled into a smile he didn't feel, and he turned to look over the city again, the dark buildings, the black water of the bay, and he couldn't stop thinking how idifferent/i all this would look in a century's time.

"I appreciate it. Tell me, _Alice Guppy_... how did you get involved with Torchwood? You don't seem the type to be swayed by queen and country."

The smile evaporated in a heartbeat, and she took a tiny step backwards, eying him warily. Jack inclined his head to one side, still smiling faintly. "You know more about me than anyone in this century," he pointed out. "I promise I won't tell." As if he had anyone to tell.

She studied him. There was something in her eyes that reminded him of wild things, ready to bite if provoked. Best not provoke her, then. He waited, and finally she said, not at all guiltily, "I used to be a thief."

Jack laughed, a short, humorless bark, that escaped him despite himself. "So did I."

"I'll believe _that_," Alice said, in a way Jack felt implied he might _still_ be a thief. He shot her an affronted look, and she grinned, still feral but friendly, for the time being. "I was good at it. I still am, but here they call it 'information acquisition'. But I was arrested once - for something else entirely, by the way - and Emily found me."

"Offered you a chance," Jack said, because here was an old familiar story, "to be better than you were." The Doctor had been his salvation; maybe Torchwood was hers, and he tried hard to ignore the irony there.

"I haven't reformed, Mr. Harkness," she said scornfully, surprising him. "I'm no less a criminal here - the only difference is that they know how to use me."

Dangerous way to think of herself. Dangerous and familiar. Jack turned around completely to face her. "Is that what Torchwood is, then? An organization of criminals under the auspices of Her Majesty?"

The two of them stood so close he could feel her breath on his face in the cold night air. He noticed things about her. The way her curly hair flew away from her face, though she wore it pulled back. The flush of her thin cheeks. How easy it would be to take her gun from her and shoot her with it.

"Torchwood is an organization charged to defend the British Empire, by any means necessary. If that means using people like me - or people like you, Mr. Harkness - they will do so. And once we're here, we don't reform. We only descend to meet the threats presented to us."

There were a thousand retorts Jack could have made to that. That the Doctor was not the person they seemed to think, and he could list a hundred ways he had saved them all, over and over... That _he_ was not the man this woman thought he was, and what did "people like you" mean anyway? That he had seen organizations like Torchwood tear themselves apart with their own arrogance and self-assured superiority, that they were fighting the wrong damn war...

He brushed past her instead, and walked heavily down the stairs. _We do not reform, we only descend... _He tried to tell himself it meant nothing, he'd worked for worse masters before, and when the Doctor came it wouldn't matter anyway... Jack left Alice Guppy standing on the roof, but her words followed him the rest of the night.


End file.
